


There is no darkness you can't guide me through

by Coffee_Flavored_Kisses



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Blind AU, Husbands, M/M, patrick goes blind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 15:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20392120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses/pseuds/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses
Summary: A sports accident from Patrick's youth causes blindness in his adult years. Based on a prompt on Tumblr.





	There is no darkness you can't guide me through

David first noticed it when Patrick squinted while reading the morning paper. The skeptic denialist in David assumed it had nothing to do with failing eyesight and everything to do with the local paper’s lack of relevant news. After ten minutes of reading, Patrick complained of a headache, knocked back a couple aspirin, closed his eyes, and drank his tea in silence while David, only slightly concerned, changed the sheets and dimmed the lights. Patrick just needed rest, he figured.

The next time he noticed it, they were driving to meet a vendor. Patrick missed three stop signs in a row. David, not one usually concerned with road safety, placed his hand on Patrick’s thigh.   
“Is someone in a hurry?”   
Patrick laughed it off. “Maybe I need glasses,” he answered. He made an appointment later that day. David had insisted.

The third time, Patrick approached the car, stopped, and handed the keys to David. “Maybe you should drive.”   
That’s when David knew. They both did.

It was a freak thing, really. Patrick had suffered a couple of concussions during college. Despite his coach’s concern, it seemed Patrick was fond of a head-first slide into home, diving for fly balls, generally sacrificing his body for the win. He’d dealt with a broken toe, a hairline fracture on his tailbone, but it was the concussions that more or less sealed his fate. All these years later, the headaches, the fading vision were explained.

Patrick was going blind.

David tried not to show what the news was doing to him. But he couldn’t contain it. He went on quite a bit about modern medicine and how this couldn’t possibly be the end of it. He threw his arms up at the first doctor, then the second. By the third, he’d started to accept it. As much as he ever would.

He was almost angry that Patrick wasn’t taking the news quite as hard. He didn’t always see how Patrick was paying closer attention to things now, that he would study David a little longer than usual, or that he would take closer noticed to the number of steps up to their apartment. Stowing it away for the future. Holding onto whatever he could for as long as it lasted.

In fact, David didn’t notice any of it until one night as they lie in bed together, face to face. Patrick staring into David’s eyes while David explained their new close-toed shoe policy he wanted to implement. Patrick running his thumb along the stubble of David’s jawline while David wondered aloud if Celine Dion had ever done yard work. Patrick kissing David’s mouth long and slow and holding back tears as David and everything else fell silent. David noticed it all that night. He noticed how Patrick was savoring everything. Remembering it before he had a chance to forget it.

“On the plus side, you’ll never have to see what I look like as an old man,” David joked. It was the first time he’d let himself joke about it.

“I’ll feel the wrinkles,” Patrick answered.

“I can stop working out.”

“I’ll feel the pudge,” Patrick smiled, his fingers dancing along David’s waist. 

“I can stop buying that face cream that takes way too long to apply,” David smiled even as tears shone along the corners of his eyes.

“And if you think I won’t kiss every one of those crow’s feet and smile lines and remind you that you’re letting yourself go…”

But David stopped him with a kiss, with a hand to the back of Patrick’s head, threading through the hair he hadn’t cut in too long now. 

From that point on, Patrick would only fall asleep looking at David. “If I wake up and it’s gone, I want you to be the last thing I saw.”

But as it happened, as glasses no longer unfogged the vision and a daily pill was the only thing keeping away the headaches, Patrick couldn’t be so positive about it all the time. He clenched his jaw and painstakingly guided David point by point through their business plan, through schedules, through spreadsheets, through order forms. He said maybe they should sell the store, maybe they should use the money to invest in a place closer to the city, closer to resources, specialists, therapists. In frustration Patrick had stormed out of more than one Braille lesson, had lamented over the cost of losing his eyesight, both financial and emotional. 

And when it happened, they both felt the loss. 

Patrick woke up, but wasn’t sure he’d woken up. He wasn’t sure that his eyes were open, then was sure they were but wasn’t sure if he could see, or if the room was just very dark, or if this was a dream, a nightmare, a reality. His new reality. Pain struck his chest and a fear that even though he’d known close to a year now that this day was coming, it had come now. He’d seen David’s face for the last time. 

And when David awoke, he watched the distant, unfocused gaze. He knew, too. 

A doctor confirmed it, confirmed for the fifth time or so that no surgery or therapy could repair it. David led Patrick out of the office on his arm, drove him home, sat with him, prepared his meal, spoke softly, dried his tears, held him close. 

Things were difficult for a long while. Patrick had become predictably depressed. Money was tighter. David wasn’t quite catching onto the whole concept of deadlines and writing legibly. They’d hired a consultant to help them get back on their feet, and even though it took longer than it should have, it worked. Slowly, things started returning to normal. Slowly, Patrick’s eyesight became a sort of secondary issue in their daily lives. Even if in their marriage, it was more of a stumbling block than they’d predicted.

They had loved each other always, and this would never change. Still, an unmistakable distance had manifested between them. And David was tired of loving Patrick from across this bottomless crater.

He started leading Patrick by the hand rather than the arm. The sun that no longer woke Patrick was replaced by David’s kisses rather than an alarm clock. And then, most daring of all, David joked about it again for the first time since it had happened.

“On the plus side, you can’t see the wrinkles you’re getting now.”

Patrick, seated beside him on the bed, said nothing. David wondered if it was too soon. Of course it was too soon. It would always be too soon.

“Says the guy who hasn’t had his eyebrows shaped in three months,” Patrick answered dryly.

David smiled. Then, mortified, realized Patrick was right. In all of the chaos, he’d forgotten.

“Yesterday you wore two different-colored socks,” David smirked. “I was afraid to say anything.”

“On Tuesday, you wore a sweater from an outlet store.”

David gasped. “I would never!”

“You would. You did.” Patrick bit his lip, suppressing a smile. “You also blew right through a stop sign yesterday on the way to the motel. Maybe you should get your eyes checked.”

David laughed. And then the damndest thing happened. He started crying.

“What’s wrong?” Patrick asked, and he reached across, his palm cradling David’s cheek.

David leaned into the touch, then moved closer, his body falling beneath the weight of these months, his eyes closed, all of him pressed against Patrick.

“I’m sorry you’re going through all this,” he managed to say. It was meek and almost inaudible. It was spoken in desperation and hope. Hope that even if things couldn’t change, they could at least become habit. Hope that Patrick would close his end of this gaping hole between them.

“I’m not,” Patrick admitted.

David couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “How could you not?”

“Because,” Patrick answered. “Look at us.”

They held each other closer, embrace turning into need, manifesting in a kiss, another kiss, another. 

Patrick still slept facing David. It had become habit. Perhaps now, he thought that if there were such a thing as miracles, and if one decided to visit them some morning and restore his sight, he’d like David to be the first thing he saw.

But then again, maybe he had all the miracles he needed already.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: nbc-trialanderror


End file.
